The picture of beauty

She is dressed in a striped hot pink and orange skirt with a Minnie Mouse polka dot swimsuit top, four or five strings of beads hang around her neck, the faint tracings of her afternoon snack of blackberries around her lips and dirt caked underneath her fingernails.  “I look so beautiful, Momma,” she says. Her brown eyes glitter with delight.

To me she is the picture of beauty.

One the way home, Daisy is perched on my back nestled in the Ergo while Lily rides stretched out in the stroller, gurgling and laughing at the silly faces I make for her.

“Momma,” Daisy says, “I saw a fairy. She was aqua,” spurting out her new favorite color name, “and pink. And purple, Momma. She had purple wings. So beautiful.” She tells me she can fly like fairies as she brushes my hair. She leans her head down, gives me a squeeze, “I am so happy, Momma. So happy.”

To me, this is the most lovely sentence in the English language.  

One day, my girls will be older and beads and sand and fairies will be forgotten. One day, they will be older and they will think it was silly to ever have believed they could fly. And one day, they will be older and not have time for pretend tea parties or to dig holes in the sand or build castles made of wooden blocks with their momma.

But for now, they are little and innocent and the imagination is beginning to emerge. We arrive back at our house, unload and stretch out on the front grass to wait for daddy.

And to me, in this moment, I have never seen anything so beautiful.